Fwd: <sla_discussion> Bill Bright's Memorial Service

Tue Oct 31 01:50:42 UTC 2006

Information on Bill Bright's memorial service for those not on the SLA 
list, apologies from cross-posting.

all best,

Leila

----- Forwarded message from kkhall at colorado.edu -----
    Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 17:41:13 -0700
    From: Kira Hall <kkhall at colorado.edu>
Reply-To: Kira Hall <kkhall at colorado.edu>
Subject: <sla_discussion> Bill Bright's Memorial Service
      To: List for the International Gender and Language Association 
<GALA-L at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>, sla_discussion at lists.berkeley.edu

(Please accept my apologies for multiple postings)

Dear all,

Many of you have contacted me regarding the date and time of the
memorial service for Bill Bright, who recently passed away.   I wanted
to send out information about the service in case some of you are
interested in attending, particularly if you happen to be in the
Colorado area.  The memorial service will be held on the University of
Colorado at Boulder campus, Boulder, Colorado, on Sunday, November 5,
from 1-3 pm, in Room 235 of the UMC, University Memorial Center.
(There is also a memorial service planned for this year's LSA, but I
don't yet have the information on that.)

Below I have attached the obituary from the New York Times, which
appeared on Tuesday.  The previous email I sent included an obituary
from the LA Times;  you'll see that this one is a bit more focused on
Bill's sociolinguistic contributions.

The service promises to be something Bill would have liked, bringing
together family, friends, faculty, graduate students, musicians he has
befriended over the years, and several members of the Karuk tribe.

Best to all,

Kira

***************
New York Times
October 23, 2006

William Bright, 78, Expert in Indigenous Languages, Is Dead
By MARGALIT FOX

William Bright, an internationally renowned linguist who spent more
than half a century inventorying the vanishing riches of the indigenous
languages of the United States, died on Oct. 15 in Louisville, Colo. He
was 78 and lived in Boulder, Colo.

The cause was a brain tumor, said his daughter, Susie Bright, the
well-known writer of erotica.

At his death, Mr. Bright was professor adjoint of linguistics at the
University of Colorado, Boulder. He was also emeritus professor of
linguistics and anthropology at the University of California, Los
Angeles, where he taught from 1959 to 1988.

An authority on the native languages and cultures of California, Mr.
Bright was known in particular for his work on Karuk (also spelled
Karok), an American Indian language from the northwest part of the
state. Shortly before his death, in recognition of his efforts to
document and preserve the language, he was made an honorary member of
the Karuk tribe, the first outsider to be so honored.

His books include ?American Indian Linguistics and Literature? (Mouton,
1984); ?A Coyote Reader? (University of California, 1993); ?1,500
California Place Names: Their Origin and Meaning? (University of
California, 1998); and ?Native American Placenames of the United
States? (University of Oklahoma, 2004).

Mr. Bright?s approach to the study of language was one seldom seen
nowadays. With the ascendance of Noam Chomsky in the late 1950?s,
linguistics shifted its focus from documenting language as an artifact
of human culture to analyzing it as a window onto human cognition.

But to Mr. Bright, language was inseparable from its cultural context,
which might include songs, poetry, stories and everyday conversation.
And so, lugging unwieldy recording devices, he continued to make forays
into traditional communities around the world, sitting down with native
speakers and eliciting words, phrases and sentences.

Among the languages on which he worked were Nahuatl, an Aztec language
of Mexico; Cakchiquel, of Guatemala; Luiseño, Ute, Wishram and Yurok,
languages of the Western United States; and Lushai, Kannada, Tamil and
Tulu, languages of the Indian subcontinent.

William Oliver Bright was born on Aug. 13, 1928, in Oxnard, Calif. He
received a bachelor?s degree in linguistics from the University of
California, Berkeley, in 1949. After a stint in Army intelligence, he
earned a doctorate in linguistics from Berkeley in 1955.

He began his fieldwork among the Karuk in 1949. At the time, their
language was a tattered remnant of its former splendor, spoken by just
a handful of elders. Since encounters with Europeans had rarely ended
well for the Karuk, the community had little reason to welcome an
outsider.

But Bill Bright was deferential, curious and, at 21, scarcely more than
a boy. He was also visibly homesick. The Karuk grandmothers took him
in, baking him cookies and cakes and sharing their language. They named
him Uhyanapatanvaanich, ?little word-asker.?

In 1957, Mr. Bright published ?The Karok Language? (University of
California), a detailed description of the language and its structure.
Last year, the tribe published a Karuk dictionary, compiled by Mr.
Bright and Susan Gehr. Today, Karuk children learn the language in
tribal schools.

Mr. Bright was divorced twice and widowed twice. From his first
marriage, he is survived by his daughter, Susannah (known as Susie), of
Santa Cruz, Calif. Also surviving are his wife, Lise Menn, a professor
of linguistics at the University of Colorado; two stepsons, Stephen
Menn of Montreal and Joseph Menn of Los Angeles; one grandchild; and
two step-grandchildren.

His other books include ?The World?s Writing Systems? (Oxford
University, 1996), which he edited with Peter T. Daniels; and the
International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (Oxford University, 1992), of
which he was editor in chief. From 1966 to 1987, Mr. Bright was the
editor of Language, the field?s flagship journal.

The professor was also a meticulous reader of all his daughter?s
manuscripts. He displayed the finished products ? among them ?Susie
Bright?s Sexual State of the Union? (Simon & Schuster, 1997) and
?Mommy?s Little Girl: On Sex, Motherhood, Porn and Cherry Pie?
(Thunder?s Mouth Press, 2003) ? proudly on his shelves at home.

**********
Kira Hall, Associate Professor
Director, Program in Culture, Language and Social Practice (CLASP)
Departments of Linguistics and Anthropology
Campus Box 295
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO  80309-0295
Phone: 303-492-2912
Fax: 303-492-4416
Web: www.colorado.edu/linguistics/faculty/kira_hall

----- End forwarded message -----

--
Leila Monaghan, PhD
Department of Communication and Culture
Indiana University
Ashton Mottier Hall
1760 E. 10th Street
Bloomington, IN 47405-9700
(812) 855-4607
monaghan at indiana.edu
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